Judy Beard, Director of Fundraising and Marketing at Breast Cancer Care, said: 'It shows a dog can be a woman's best friend too.

'We're really pleased and excited to have Brenda involved in out fashion show. We might have to get Mrs Murphy all dressed up to join her on the catwalk.'

Claire Guest CEO of Medical Detection Dogs, said: 'Mrs Murphy is a superb example of a dog who has naturally used its huge olfactory capacity and intuition to alert her owner to her illness.

'It is dogs like Mrs Murphy that led us at Medical Detection Dogs to conduct the world's first and only scientific study proving the ability of dogs to smell cancer volatiles in human urine, which was published in the BMJ in 2004.

'Subsequently our ongoing research project, which harnesses a dog's extraordinary olfactory capacity along with a dog's willingness to work with us, continues to prove that dogs can smell different types of cancer from bladder cancer, breast, melanoma and our most recent study is about to launch looking at prostate cancer.

'The long-term objective is to work out if cancer has a generic odour, something that will help in the earlier diagnosis, through which thousands of lives will be saved.'